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Fortune Magazine On 'The Biggest Game In Town'
Thanks to Fortune Magazine for their feature on why games are seriously big business. The introduction reads: "Music? Sales down. Hollywood? Hit or miss. Tech? Flat. No wonder everyone wants to be in videogames", as the piece goes on to throw out some interesting statistics: "Within three weeks [of release, Madden NFL] grossed $100 million -- two million copies sold at $50 a pop. In roughly the same period, the summer hit movie Seabiscuit returned $78 million." The amount of hours spent in front of games is also highlighted: "On average an American will spend 75 hours this year playing videogames, more than double the amount of time spent gaming in 1997 and eclipsing that of DVD or tape rentals today." But despite the article's EA-hyping, it points out the cyclical nature of the industry and failures, too, such as The Sims Online, to which "...just under 10,000 are now subscribed."
If you are a large game house like EA with solid games like their EA Sports line, you can expect big returns for yearly updates.
Try to break into the business without having serious funding. It's almost impossible.
The only thing that is clear from this article is that them that's got will get and them's that's not shall lose. And it still is news, I guess.
You really can make statistics say anything you want. Nevermind that a movie lasts 2 hours (maybe 4 if you're an Oliver Stone fan), whereas a game is required to supply 50+ hours of gameplay or it's considered a waste of money.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Just as Ford shelled out to have 007 drive an Aston Martin in "Die Another Day", car manufacturers will go out of their way to provide prototype designs and specs for their new muscle cars for inclusion into games like Grand Turismo. As the article points out, gamers spend enormous amounts of time with a good game, which gives your product much better exposure than a 30-second TV commercial or a print ad.
The bold print giveth, and the fine print taketh away
HERE is an article describing exactly what you are trying to say (I think). It was either posted here or on Fark a few weeks ago.
If Chaos Theory has taught us anything, it's that we must kill all the butterflies.
I could be wrong, but I don't think that the profit is as good as you would imply. In order to keep subscribers in an MMOG, you have to continue to employ artists and programmers to provide new content and fix whatever problems there may be (MMOG players are the bitchiest of all gamers). On top of that, these games have very long development cycles and so the company needs a lot of cash to offset the development costs.
My only political goal is to see to it that no political party achieves its goals.